It's Party Time

~It's that time of the year when everything gets very difficult. If you're a student, you're facing a week or two of examinations. If you're at work, you're likely facing end-of-the-quarter projects. If you're lucky, you're holding out for a Christmas vacation. I fall into the latter category, as I am lucky to get some time off for New Year's...although not for Christmas!

Christmas is very popular in Japan. All religious connotations have been thoroughly expunged, resulting in a celebration of all the things we Americans know and love: consumerism, tacky decorations, endless Christmas music, the works. Don't get me wrong; those things all bring a warm glow to my heart, a little bit of home on the other side of the world. Actually, I'm quite pleased with how the Japanese celebrate, because they actually wait until December before breaking out all the Christmas stuff, rather than the post-Halloween blitz that has become standard in America.

Anyway, today I went to a Christmas party held at the Nagaoka Civics Center. It was a great time to hang out with some friends and meet new people. The staff set up an impressive lineup of events and activities, all for only 100 yen (less than a dollar).

^ The first event was making mochi, a kind of rice cake. To make the mochi, a hot mass of melted rice was dumped into this wooden barrel, and people took turns bashing it with these big wooden hammers. It's a great form of stress relief! Once the rice was thoroughly smashed to a soft mass by the hammers, it was broken up into several large pieces to make the cakes.

^A Japanese woman who could some speak English told me a little about this activity. The rice cakes are made in this traditional manner by rice farmers to give thanks to the gods. They are made in late December and eaten in early January, after the New Year's celebration.

^ Once the rice cakes were finished, it was time for the party to begin in earnest. The decorations were great and obviously someone had put a lot of time into them. There was also a paper tree on the wall where you could write your Christmas wish; my favorite was, "I want to speak Nihongo [Japanese] like Nihonjin [a Japanese person]." I wrote,

"For Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men
...and Women
...and Animals
...and, well, you get the idea."

^ There were traditional foods from all over the world at the party. There were Mexican tortillas, German pretzels, Japanese cakes, Brazilian sweets, Australian cookies, and of course...

^ American "Pringrles". Strangely, they tasted just like Pringles.

^ Some people were wearing Christmas costumes. No holiday party would be complete without Santa, of course. The guy on the right seems to have recycled his bat costume from Halloween.

^ In the sack, Santa had bags of candy to give to winners of various activities scheduled later. I didn't see anything holding his beard on, and later saw that he was using a glue stick to glue the beard to his face! He told me, "I was going to use staples, but they were all out." That's so Harrison Ford.

After the party-goers had eaten and socialized a bit, it was time for the next part of the program: a "mini-concert". To start us off, a pair of Nagaoka's Brazilian residents entertained us with some incredible breakdancing:

^ The guy in the helmet was amazing, wasn't he? Those Braziljin (Brazilians) sure can dance.

Next was a chorus of Japanese schoolchildren singing songs. The first song they sang for us was, for lack of a better title on my part, called "Let's Go!":

^ I have no clue what the song was about or what they were saying, except of course the refrain of "Let's Go!". Does anyone care to hazard a guess as to what the song was about?

Tomorrow, I'll post more pictures and videos from the Christmas party, so stay tuned to David Does Japan. ~Oyasumi!